Youth Theory - a South African Perspective

Theory, and in particular sociological theory, Wallace and Wolf (1980:3) asserted, is about real life situations and experiences, and that “…our whole way of looking at the world depends on our theoretical perspective; and to read sociological theory is to understand a great deal more about what we and our world are like and how unordinary, complex, and ambiguous the most taken-for-granted and everyday aspects of our life may be”. This suggests that sociological theory not only informs our understanding of social reality, but that it is itself derived from that reality. This paper concerns itself with the latter. It examines a collection of empirical studies on youth in the contemporary South African society which are part of the book on youth in the BRICS countries, with the view to deriving theoretical insights on youth. These will be examined against the existing conceptual frameworks on youth, and especially the indigenous African concepts of youth.